The Weekend
by secedo
Summary: After a night of fun Maya and Lucas discuss how and why it happened when Lucas belongs to Riley.


"Lucas, it's not that big of a deal," Maya insisted, her eyes trained on him as he paced back and forth around her bedroom. She was wearing only one of her purple silk sheets, a set that Riley had talked her into buying, which only really made matters worse, and Lucas had at least thought to put his boxers back on before beginning his freakout.

"Not that big of a deal? Maya, we just..." he stopped in front of her, gesturing to her and the bed she was sitting on with his hand to finish his sentence for him. "Maya," he addressed her again in a quieter tone, his voice lower than she was sure she'd ever heard from him before.

She stared at him, blinking only when she had to because she was afraid of scaring him off again. "It's okay. I mean it. Nobody has to know about this." She was speaking soothingly, as if he were a child who had been spooked by an invisible monster in his closet or something. "Come here and sit down," she pleaded.

"What am I going to do?" He did as he was told and sat beside her on the bed, putting enough distance between them to not spark another fit as he ran his hands over his face and back through his hair to settle on the back of his head.

He sat quietly, deep in thought for what felt like minutes but was probably only seconds before letting out a quiet groan of frustration. "Seriously, Maya, please tell me what I'm supposed to do here. What do we do?"

Maya pursed her lips and looked Lucas straight in his eye- something Lucas was finding himself morally unable to do at the moment- and readjusted herself so that her legs were crossed under the sheet and her back was straighter. It was her therapist position. It made her feel bigger, more equipped to deal with the drama. It was funny to her that the drama was coming from Lucas, because it was usually coming from his girlfriend. His girlfriend. Right. That was the entire issue, wasn't it?

She let out her own soft sigh but didn't break her stare even as she did let herself remember the betrayal she'd just taken part in. "We don't need to tell her, Lucas," she assured him, even though she knew it was completely wrong of her to consider.

"Can you do that?" He didn't seem as if it was something he was considering per se, he just seemed curious as to whether it was actually an option or not. "Could you actually not tell her? I've known you two for five years and I don't think I've ever seen either of you not tell the other something."

His brows were furrowed in question and Maya mirrored him as she considered it herself. "I keep things from Riley. I keep a lot from Riley. I mean it's usually just stuff like the planetary status of Pluto, and when pretty much anything bad at all happens to me like my mom taking off and leaving me here alone for weeks at a time. But yeah, I think I could keep this from her," she answered, but her face was still twisted in thought. "Could you though? Why did this even happen in the first place, Lucas?"

Lucas and Riley had been officially together since their freshman year of high school. They were juniors now. They had three official years and two unofficial under their belts. He should love her at this point. Maya knew that they were exchanging those words. You didn't sleep with someone else when you loved someone though, did you?

She couldn't say she'd ever been in love to know what it does to you. She didn't have any clear examples of love to learn from aside from Cory and Topanga, and they were clearly not the healthiest role models when it came to the subject. Honestly, she wasn't sure if the concept of love even existed in a tangible way. Maybe Farkle had rubbed off on her in that sense. She didn't see how it could be real without any actual evidence. From the statistics put in front of her if it was real it only ruined people anyway. Maybe Farkle was exactly what this kind of problem needed.

"I don't know. You were there and you looked so pretty-"

"Don't you dare blame this on me, Huckleberry," Maya cut him off venomously as she saw where he was going with his excuses.

Lucas blinked a few times in confusion and licked his lips to buy a little more time to regroup. "I didn't mean to blame you I just meant you looked really pretty and I couldn't get my own shit together. I guess."

"Riley looked pretty too," Maya said with a sigh. She wasn't sure that she herself had any explanations for how or why she let it happen. Lucas wasn't the only one there. She wasn't drunk, she had consented just like he had. "I don't know. It's not like I didn't know it was you on top of me. It's not like I didn't know exactly who you were and exactly what it meant. I might be even more at fault here than you," she admitted.

The two sat in silence as time passed slowly, both sucked too much into their own thoughts to speak to one another at all.

"Farkle would tell us to break it down and analyze it," Maya said finally, her near whisper sounding all too loud as it broke the tense silence. Maybe tense wasn't the right word though, because if you asked either of them they would both admit that they still felt completely comfortable with the other. It wasn't like any of this wasn't preceded by chemistry on top of chemistry on top of chemistry.

The comment about their freakishly smart best friend actually made Lucas chuckle a little, which only made Maya chuckle a little with him. Lucas leaned back on his elbows as he came back to Earth, looking at Maya with a sad smile, causing her to look down at her hands and take a deep breath. Obviously this was a real situation. They weren't going to get out of this one with a few jokes and a 'do better next time' pat on the shoulder.

"That's not actually a bad idea, I guess. To break down little bits and analyze them. I know what happened though. I mean, I don't know what happened with you, but I know why I did it."

The admission caused Maya to lean her head to the side curiously. She abandoned her thoughts in favor of hearing what he had to say, because she was going to make him continue with that thought process whether he planned to or not. "Do you," she prompted, giving him the go ahead with her hand as if the floor was his.

He heaved a dramatic sigh and looked from the ceiling to Maya. "You let me," he said simply. He held up a finger to stop her when she opened her mouth to oppose him again. "I'm not done. It's something that I think on some level I wanted to do for a long time. I know. I know on some level I wanted to do for a long time. I think our bickering has always been this kind of game of chicken for me. I never really knew where it was going to lead if neither of us stopped it, but last night neither of us stopped it and here we are."

His answer actually resonated a little more with Maya than she'd expected. She nodded in understanding but then looked at him, obviously annoyed. "You had your chance, you know. You chose Riley. I don't think it's really fair of you to tell me you've wanted to sleep with me for a long time."

She pulled the sheet tighter around her, suddenly feeling a little bit used by Lucas and very aware of the fact that she wasn't wearing anything underneath it. If he wanted to sleep with her for a long time, shouldn't he have broken up with Riley? Shouldn't he have wanted to be with her? Unless that's all he wanted from her. Just to sleep with her. That's what she was hearing him say right now and honestly, she got it. She knew what people thought of her. She wasn't promiscuous or anything but she was small and blonde and sassy. She knew that she was the hot girl that boys wanted to play with but not deal with long enough to settle down. She wasn't stupid or anything.

She'd just never expected that kind of treatment from Lucas.

"Hey," Lucas called, seeing her withdraw into herself. He'd known her long enough, cared about her long enough, to know when she was feeling vulnerable. He reached for her hand, the first time he'd touched her since, well, touching her, and pulled her closer to him. She resisted momentarily but it didn't take too much convincing on his part to get her to let him pull her against him. He wrapped his arms around her and ran his hand over her bare shoulder soothingly. "I didn't mean it like that. It's not like that," he promised loud enough that only the two of them could have heard even if someone had been sitting right next to them. As if it was a secret he only wanted Maya to know. That wasn't really far off though.

"I'm not just some Fuck Me Barbie, Lucas. I at least thought...I don't know what I thought was going to happen. I guess I just didn't think it would just be some bucket list check mark for you. Fuck Maya Hart before proposing to Riley Matthews or whatever." Maya scolded him, but she never pulled away. She just sort of lectured into his collarbone as he rubbed her shoulder without acknowledging that he was comforting her at all.

He chuckled a little and leaned his head down to press a kiss against her curls. "Maya, it was never on my bucket list to fuck you. I mean, I might put it on there now, because it would never be some love her and leave her thing with you, but it was never something I ever planned to do. What I meant was it's something I thought about sometimes. You in general. I know I had a chance. I know I picked Riley. We were fourteen and I was trying to recreate myself to make my parents proud of me. She was the kind of person that fourteen year old New York Lucas was supposed to be with."

He began to rock her as she got more comfortable in his arms. She stayed quiet, letting him continue. "Then I turned fifteen and I had a girlfriend that got my mom off my back, and she was one of my best friends, and you didn't hate me so I still had you too. At fifteen that seemed right. That seemed like it should have been enough. But then I was sixteen and my girlfriend was still one of my best friends and I loved her, but I loved her like I loved Farkle, and you looked so pretty and I loved you too and at sixteen that seemed okay. You're not supposed to know what love is at sixteen so who was I to say it wasn't right?"

"And at seventeen," Maya prompted quietly, looking up at him meekly and smoothing them both down so that they were lying across the width of the mattress, her still wrapped in her sheet and him with his arms still around her as he stared up at the ceiling above them.

"And then I was seventeen," he started slowly, a bit more cautiously, "and I understood my feelings a little better, and I discovered that I wasn't fourteen year old New York Lucas anymore, and that Riley was still that same Riley. She's grown, she's matured, but she's still that same Riley. And I love that Riley, don't get me wrong. I love that Riley with every fiber of my being. She's so special, and she's so worth it, and I'm such a monster because at seventeen I still loved Riley the way I loved Farkle and I knew it wasn't right. And I still loved you, and I still don't know if I know what love is supposed to be like so I don't know how I mean that I loved you, but I knew it wasn't like I loved Farkle."

Lucas paused a second to see if Maya would yell at him for anything yet. When she didn't, he sighed quietly and continued on. "But there was Riley, and she's so worth it, and hurting Riley would be so unforgivable. I don't know what I'd do if I did something that she couldn't forgive. Something that Farkle couldn't forgive. Something that you couldn't forgive. And I'm here. I'm still seventeen. I still love Riley the same way I love Farkle and I'm still holding you like this even though I'm completely aware of what's going on. I still don't have any plans of stopping. And I still don't have a clue what I'm supposed to do about Riley. How am I supposed to hurt her? Because god, even if this is the last time this happens, even if you never forgive me for this, I can't just go back to how things were yesterday. I can't just...I can't," he finished, biting his lip and shaking his head at himself.

Most of what he'd said was stuff he hadn't admitted fully to himself even. Sure, they were stray thoughts from here and there that he'd pushed aside as quickly as they'd come, but in full they were new to him. He wasn't surprised when she took a moment or two of silence to digest.

Then the moments turned into seconds, and they seemed like they were going to turn into minutes, and he wasn't sure if he could handle minutes. He was about to ask her if she'd fallen asleep when he finally felt her bury her face into his chest and let out a muffled groan against his skin. He raised an eyebrow as she lifted her gaze and made eye contact with him.

"So three and a half years later you're picking me and now we have to magically find a way to break it to Riley without hurting her. And on top of that we have to make her okay with me, her best friend in the entire world, being with you. Now. Three and a half years after that was okay with her. I think I actually hate you a little right now," she joked, the serious expression still planted on her face to make sure he knew that she was covering her pain with humor, but it was still a horrible, terrible situation that they were in.

"I know, Short stack, I know. I'm sorry," he said sincerely, petting her hair to sooth her.

Maya finally allowed herself to loosen up at the nickname. Honestly, she didn't know what to do and she wasn't sure this was going to be a possible situation to get out of unscathed, but everything he'd said had been so nice to hear. "Can we just make the priority ourselves for tonight and leave the drama for tomorrow? I think one night of finally just being here together like this will get me over this mountain we're going to have to hike tomorrow. So let's just be here and pretend this is how it's supposed to be."

Lucas hummed happily at the sound of her proposal and reached to take her hand with a smile on his face. "Maybe we can take the weekend?"

She agreed with a nod as she looked up to meet his gaze with her own smile. "Maybe we can take the weekend."


End file.
